Alcoholic beverage permit approved for Maple Street restaurant

Call it the latest round in the seemingly never-ending Maple Street ABO War. For more years than they care to remember, people who live on or near Maple Street in the University section of Uptown have been journeying to City Hall to speak against allowing one after another proposed new bar or restaurant to operate as an alcoholic-beverage outlet.

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Sometimes they have been successful, but more often they have not.

They were back at City Hall this week, appearing before the City Planning Commission in opposition to a request by the Singha Song Thai restaurant at 7708 Maple St.to sell alcohol with meals. Once again, the neighbors went away unhappy.

Both the commission and the City Council normally grant permission for bona fide restaurants to serve alcohol for on-premises consumption with meals, but to some of the neighbors the issue is much more complicated than that.

They have long complained that businesses that apply for city permits as legitimate restaurants end up “morphing,” either gradually or overnight, into bars that sell food only as an afterthought. City enforcement is so lax, critics charge, that the businesses are able to go on operating for years even though they no longer are in compliance with the terms of the original permit.

The result, often, is another college-oriented bar on a street that already has a plethora of them, attracting hundreds of young people who congregate inside and outside the bars for hours on weekend and even weekday nights, making noise, strewing trash, sometimes urinating in nearby yards and on occasion becoming crime victims.

At the Planning Commission hearing, neighbors pointed to what happened at 7708 Maple St. in the past, before the current business opened several months ago.

In 2002, when Jay Batt was the councilman representing the Maple Street area, the council passed an ordinance allowing the “white tablecloth” restaurant Nautical to sell alcohol with meals. In an unusual move, the conditional-use permit was limited to Nautical operator Eric Bay alone, meaning that if he closed or sold the restaurant, the permit would expire.

In 2003, however, after Nautical closed, the council removed that restriction, meaning any subsequent restaurants at the site would be allowed to sell alcohol with meals. The site became home to Il Piatto, an Italian restaurant, and then the Big Apple Deli, which critics said was more of a bar than a restaurant. After Hurricane Katrina, the building became the Uptown Cajun, a college and sports bar.

Jill Gautreaux, the attorney for the latest tenant, the Thai restaurant, assured the commission that whatever may have happened in the past at 7708 Maple, the current operators intend to run a true restaurant and to serve drinks only to diners. She noted that it closes its doors at 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends and said it attracts few if any college students.

Neighbors such as Keith Hardie, vice president of the Maple Area Residents Inc. organization, said their objection was not to Singha Song but to the possibility that the site, if once again given a permit to sell alcohol, would again turn into a “wild college bar.”

Maple Street resident Kirk Groome said he was “trying to defend what’s left” of what was, before the proliferation of college bars, a desirable residential neighborhood.

The commission voted 7-0 to approve the request for a conditional-use permit to sell alcohol, provided that it is served “only in combination with food service” and does not constitute more than 50 percent of the business’ total revenue. Those are standards provisos, but they have often proved difficult to enforce.

The commission also required the business to close by the same hours it now does: 9 p.m. on weekdays and 10 p.m. on weekends. It rejected neighbors’ request that it require the restaurant to remove an existing physical bar or make it inaccessible to the public. The planning staff said that was not necessary.

The final decision is up to the City Council, which is likely to accept the recommendation of Councilwoman Susan Guidry, whose district includes the site.